Who benefits from exams
Who benefits from exams
Are exams like GCSEs, A level or other public exams fair? If you are lazy they are designed to minimise the chance that you will do well. The exam board who prepared the exam will have done all they can to ensure you can’t pass ‘by fluke’.
If you work hard, engage critical thinking and do not panic all will be well. However a great deal is down to character. Character is as much about luck as anything. You character determines where you you fall between the two extremes of success and disaster. Traditional written exams discriminate against candidates who are fully absorbed in the subject in favour of the ‘street smart’ pupil who has simply learnt how to pass the exam.
Exams promote fluency over an encompassing, thoughtful grasp of the subject. The ‘street hare’ over the tortoise. The diet of exams usually in the early summer season represent a sudden change of speed of thinking and a method of grading geared in favour of those who want to do exams for exams’ sake.
Life comes at you quick. That is life. So why not the step change of speed that exams provide. After all it is good preparation. The young are not drilled into military service. Instead they are lined up in rows and told to sit exams to test exam taking.
Alternatives to the exam exercise for your CV could be as wild as your imagination. Learning skills that are unique might be more important to both your employers and personal development than a high score in A-level sociology. One could argue that successfully living off the land for 3 months with only a coat hanger is a better test of resourcefulness. Certainly an alternative to staying up all night in a comfy flat cramming your short term memory with information you’ll forget right after tomorrow’s exam.
One could even deploy the erratic health strategy. Encouraging poor handwriting, poor spelling and hey presto. You get extra time in the exam with the access arrangements. That is lateral thinking that is so worthy of a CV mention.
Of course there are the old fashioned cheaters. Ted Kennedy managed to get some else to do his Spanish exam at Harvard. Unsuccessfully and he was caught and sent down a year. Perhaps getting caught can be seen as part of their own solution. Aspiring politicians who may have taken a more pragmatic approach to exams as just a hurdle to leap over.
Cheating has to be punished while the whole idea of exams is that all candidates go through the same ordeal. The rise of study drugs and other forms of help clearly shows this is not the case in reality. Exams in this country are something to be summited and quickly forgotten. The experience of traditional exams is a bit like childbirth. The sheer terror, sweats, the worry and the relief of when it is all over.
We are all equal in front of an exam board. That's what makes them so important in the process of being fair. Except exams, like life, are not fair.
More opinions and thoughts on the Exam Blog.